The scientific community generates an estimated 12 billion pounds of plastic waste annually. To tackle this issue, former Pitt Med students James O’Brien and Noah Pyles founded Polycarbin in 2019, aiming to create a closed-loop recycling solution specifically for the life sciences and health care ecosystem.
Their journey has now come full circle, with Pitt partnering with Polycarbin to help labs reduce their carbon footprint and landfill waste by recycling pipette tip boxes. Pipettes, commonly used in chemistry and biology to measure and transport liquids, come in boxes that are often not recyclable. Polycarbin addresses this challenge by reintroducing used plastics back into labs, reducing recycling contamination, and fostering a circular economy.
The Pipette Tip Box Recycling Pilot, a University-wide initiative, was launched in May 2024. Within a month, 43 labs across the Pittsburgh campus joined the program. Using Polycarbin’s Carbin Counter tool, we can measure the environmental impact, reinforcing our commitment to evidence-based sustainability. Since May, Pitt labs have recycled 67 pounds of plastic through Polycarbin, avoiding the extraction of new materials by recycling these products into the next generation of laboratory supplies. This effort means that within the first month of the pilot, Pitt helped the scientific research industry save 409 pounds of CO2e from being emitted and 75,025 gallons of water from being used in the extraction of virgin materials.